The Moment of Truth
by illuminata79
Summary: Nell and Mick are anxiously awaiting the return of Nell's father ... A story in three chapters, rated M solely for a bit of bad language.
1. Chapter 1

With her father's return approaching, Nell is getting more and more apprehensive, as she fears his reaction when she tells him about Mick, who in turn is also a little nervous whether he will be accepted by her moody father.

As our two young lovers face this obstacle with mixed feelings and certainly wish they were free of those family ties that bind, they made me think of this beautiful song whose lyrics were taken from two texts by William Butler Yeats (the poem "The Rose" and the play "The Shadowy Waters").

**The Waterboys - White Birds**

_I would that we were, my beloved,  
White birds on the foam of the sea  
Far from the rose and the lily  
And the fret of the flames would we be  
For the flame of the blue star of twilight  
Hung low on the rim of the sky  
Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved,  
A sadness that may never die  
A sadness that may never die_

_A weariness comes from those dreamers,  
Dew-dabbled, the lily and the rose  
Ah, dream of them not, my beloved,  
The flame of the meteor that glows  
Or the flame of the blue star that lingers,  
Hung low in the fall of the dew  
For I would we were changed, my beloved,  
To white birds on the foam, I and you  
To white birds on the foam, I and you_

_Bend low, that I may crown you, flower of the branch  
Silver fish my hands have taken from the running stream,  
Morning star, trembling in the heavens  
Like a white fawn on the border of a wood  
Bend that I may crown you, that I may crown you_

_For the flame of the blue star of twilight  
Hung low on the rim of the sky  
Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved,  
A sadness that may never die  
And far from the rose and the lily  
And the fret of the flames would we be  
Were we only white birds, my beloved,  
White birds on the foam of the sea  
White birds on the foam of the sea_

* * *

The nearer her father's next return to the mainland came, the more jittery Nell got about having to tell him that she had fallen in love with a foreigner.

I had not breached the subject again because I didn't want to put additional pressure on her, but even without a word from me, she seemed painfully torn between her feelings for me and her fear of her father's reaction.

In a way I was excited about the prospect of his arrival. I wanted to meet the figure whose shadow seemed to loom larger than life even when he was away, to see for myself if he was indeed such a fearsome person, since hadn't made a particularly disagreeable impression on me the one time I'd caught a fleeting glimpse him.

I was hoping to finally get a closer look at this Jacques Kervennec who kept me wondering what kind of man he was that Nell lost all of her courage just thinking of him. It had also struck me that her brother never mentioned his father if he could help it. Was he afraid of him, too?

As usual, the boat that carried him back home from the Pierres Noires would enter the village port on Sunday afternoon, and as usual, he expected his family to be assembled around the table with a hearty meal and his favourite dessert ready. That was why I'd have to spend the day without Nell. She was helping her mother with the preparations to make sure nothing went wrong so he'd be in a gracious mood, placated by a good dinner, when she broke the news to him.

She had promised to come and see me when he went out to have a drink at the _Korrigan _after dinner as he usually did on his first night home.

I spent the day with the Delacourts, starting with one of Marianne's simple but fabulous Sunday lunches and accompanying the family over to the beach where Michel and I helped Juliette build an impressive sand castle. Thérèse looked on over the edge of her book with all the contempt of a fourteen-year-old, but after a while, her grown-up attitude faltered and she joined her younger sister in looking for pretty seashells to decorate the castle with, while Marianne and Louise were chatting beside us.

The afternoon had all the makings of a nice family outing, and part of me enjoyed the experience, although I was secretly nervous about Nell.

We went home when the sky was clouding over in the late afternoon. I declined Marianne's offer to stay on for supper but gracefully accepted the leftovers from lunch she packed for me.

When the clanging old clock in Jean-Luc's kitchen had tolled half past eight, my stomach began to tighten unpleasantly. Would she come, and would she be relieved or devastated?

I was glad Jean-Luc was still at his sister's and couldn't see me pacing the kitchen like a caged tiger. My bedroom seemed so stiflingly small tonight that I preferred to linger downstairs.

I had almost given up on seeing her this evening when there was a timid knock on the door after all.

Hastily, half stumbling on my own feet, I hurried to open.

She flung herself into my arms before I could say anything. I gave her a kiss on the forehead and asked, "How'd it go?"

She bit her lip and looked up at me apologetically. "I … I didn't tell him."

"Nellie …"

"I couldn't, Mick, it just wasn't the right moment. He'd got up on the wrong side of his bed this morning. Nothing was good enough for him today. Believe me, it wouldn't have gone down well if I had told him." She leaned her head against my chest, looking drained, and I stroked her back without saying a word.

I couldn't help feeling disappointed a bit while I was deeply sorry for her at the same time, but the uppermost emotion was a flaming anger at her father. She had tried so hard to please him and all she ever seemed to get from him was complaints and harsh words.

Obviously, the man _was_ some kind of tyrannic despot in his own house. No wonder Nell's self-confidence gave way to that strange timidity whenever he was concerned.

"Do you think it would help if I came along and spoke to your father myself?" I suggested, clutching at straws.

"No!" was her horrified answer. "I … I don't think it would be a good idea for you to be there when I tell him. I have to do that alone."

"Well, you know him better than I do. But you know we cannot keep it a secret forever. Why don't you go ahead and get it over and done with as soon as he has calmed down a little?"

"Mick, my father …"

"Yes, I know it's unlikely that he's going to be overjoyed … but don't you think he'd be even less happy if he found out that it had been going on for a while clandestinely?"

"He'll be unhappy either way", she said gloomily.

I tried to reassure and encourage her, but in the end, I changed the subject when she got upset and crossly told me, "Mick, stop it please, you really don't know him. Let me take matters into my own hands and let me determine what's the best time to talk to him."

I held up my hands in surrender. "All right, all right. Whatever you think. I don't want us to quarrel, too."

We took a short evening stroll and tried to chat about this and that lightly, but the atmosphere remained subliminally tense.

"Wish me luck", she murmured when she was about to take the turnoff that led to the hamlet.

I kissed her instead.

* * *

Two days later, I found an envelope with my name on it, tucked under a flower pot on the windowsill by the front door, when we came home after long hours of work.

I pocketed it without a comment and took it upstairs to read on my own.

_Dearest Mick,_

_I'm terribly sorry, but I won't be able to see you for a few days. I've asked Loïc to bring you this note just to let you know that I have caught a bad cold and I'm not feeling well enough to go out. I don't want you to get it, too, so it will probably be better if you don't come visiting. _

_I'm sure I'll be fine by the end of the week and will try to come and see you on Saturday._

_I miss you already._

_Lots of kisses,_

_Nell_

I frowned. I didn't like the thought of not being allowed to see her when she was ill. She hadn't appeared unwell yesterday, but sometimes a bout of summer flu hit you out of the blue like that. And maybe her father had got the bug, too, which might explain why her father had been so cranky. From what I knew about him, he wouldn't be the kind of man who bore illness with patience.

There was little I could do if she didn't wish me to come, I thought, sighing. And as I didn't know if she had made up her mind to speak to her father, I couldn't possibly show up there anyway to inquire how she was doing. Better to let sleeping dogs lie.

I kept my eyes open for Loïc wherever I went, hoping I'd get a chance to ask him how she was, but I was watching out in vain. I also tried to sound out Jean-Luc and Michel whether they'd heard something of Nell, but neither of them had.

If we hadn't been out on the boat until late every night, I would have been hard pressed not to go and look in on her under some pretext, even if she'd asked me not to. I just couldn't suppress the hunch that something was up, something more than a trivial summer cold.

It was a great load off my mind when Jean-Luc shouted for me as I was just getting changed after work on Saturday. "You've got a lady visitor, Mister!"

I rushed downstairs, barefoot, hastily doing up the buttons on my shirt as I went.

She was standing in the door, beautiful as ever in a short-sleeved off-white blouse and an olive-green skirt, smiling brightly up at me when she heard my footsteps.

I flew down the last couple of steps, almost tripping on the last one, and welcomed her with a kiss.

"I'll leave the two of you alone, then", Jean-Luc said with a wink, lit himself a cigarette and walked off with a casual wave of his hand to potter around in the garden.

"Good to see you", I said softly and pushed a stray strand of her hair back from her face. "Feeling better?"

"Yes, very much", she replied quickly, her eyes darting away from me and back again. "It was nasty but at least it didn't last long."

"Good. Hope your family's well."

"Yes, thank you." She didn't elaborate any further. Strange to find her so monosyllabic, I thought.

As if she had sensed I was about to ask the dreaded question about her father when I opened my mouth to speak, she cleared her throat and quickly asked for a glass of water.

I went over to the sink to fill a glass and handed it to her, looking at her from close up in the rather dim light of the kitchen. There was something odd about her face, a funny shadow high up on her cheek. No, it wasn't a shadow; it didn't flit away when she moved her head.

"Did you rub your face in the dirt on your way here?" I said jokingly, trying to brush the dark smudge away with my thumb.

She winced slightly at the touch, and I realized that it wasn't a smear of something she had on her cheekbone but a faded bruise.

"Jesus, Nell!" I exclaimed in alarm. "Now really, what happened to your cheek?"

"Oh, just a stupid mishap. I bumped into a shelf in the pantry. Nothing serious. You see, I can be clumsy, too. Shouldn't go walking around in the dark." She added a laugh that had a false, exaggerated ring to it, and I noticed she was fiddling with the water glass in uncommon agitation.

That was when the scales fell from my eyes.

A hot flame of rage rocketed through me.

"Oh, no, Nell, _please_ don't give me that", I said hoarsely, barely pulling myself together. "It was _him, _wasn't it? Damn him. How dare he lay a hand on you. What a … what a …" I clenched my fists in helpless anger.

"Stop it", she cried out, sounding tormented. "Don't say these things, please."

"So it was him?"

"Yes, it was my father. He … he sometimes doesn't know what he's doing when he's furious, but he's not a bad person, he really isn't." She closed her eyes, looking very distraught, a heartbreaking tearless sob escaping her throat. "It was all my fault. You were right, Mick. I should have told him right away."

I was positively fuming. I just couldn't bear how she hurried to defend her father by blaming herself.

If I had needed any proof he was a horrible person, here it was. He had cowed this otherwise outspoken and confident young woman into trembling submission, making her still take his side when she bore the visible traces of his latest fit of violence. I was dead sure it hadn't been the first time he had hit her, and I couldn't stand the way she was trying to protect him nevertheless.

"No, Nellie, no!" I shouted as I jumped up from my seat to find an outlet for my seething wrath and smacked the windowsill behind me with my fist.

Turning back to Nell, I added emphatically, "It's _not_ your fault if he can't control himself!"

Nell flinched as if she expected me to lash out at her any minute. I took a deep breath and tried to cool down. A twinge of guilt tugged at my stomach when I realized my outburst had scared her.

"Nellie … you're not afraid of me, are you?" I said, sitting back down and reaching for her hands across the corner of the table.

She shook her head, but I wasn't quite convinced. Inwardly, I cursed that dreadful violent man who had instilled that cautious wariness in her.

"I would never do you any harm. You know that, don't you? Even if I was angry at you, I'd never lay a hand on you. I don't believe in violence, it only serves to makes things worse."

She nodded and murmured, "Of course I know. It was just the ... the yelling and …"

"I'm sorry, Nellie. I wasn't ranting at you, really. It's just killing me to think that he struck you, right in the face." I stroked the dark stain on her cheek, sadly, gently. "It's killing me to see he's hurt you."

She looked at me with dark, desperate eyes. "He just doesn't know better", she said. "He's the kind of person who can't really talk about what he feels. He gets angry when he's worried or afraid about one of us. He's very much a family man, you know. We're everything to him, and he cares a lot about us, perhaps a bit too much at times. And it's not like it hurts very badly. It looks worse than it actually is, and it'll be gone in a few days' time."

"It doesn't matter if it hurts badly or not, Nellie. He's got no right to hit you, no matter why and no matter how hard." I paused for a moment, wondering if there was anything I could do other than giving the bastard a taste of his own medicine, which certainly wouldn't work in Nell's favour. "Will you tell me what exactly happened, love?"

She nodded, her eyes filling with tears after all. Haltingly, she began to explain.


	2. Chapter 2

Her father's mood was worse than ever when he entered the house on Sunday afternoon. He told Loïc off for slouching at the table, scolded Nell when she spilled on herself during dinner and kept griping crabbily about everything from the weather to work to politics.

Nell's heart sank more and more. She knew she had to tell him. She owed it to Mick, and to herself. It was about time she stopped being a coward when her father was around.

Yet the sullen look on his face and his irritable, tetchy remarks sufficed as warning signs of what would happen when she tried to break the news to him now.

She debated with herself all the way through dinner, which was why she ended up with sauce stains on the front of her blouse, and decided she'd put the confrontation off for another day or two, hoping he'd have calmed down a little by then.

In the end, the decision was made for her the next day.

Shortly after they had finished supper, a series of determined raps on the door heralded the arrival of Jeanne, her father's sister, who came to bring some jars of freshly homemade jam and to welcome her brother back on the mainland.

She had Madeleine with her, who occupied Nell immediately and gave her an eager account of all she'd been doing during the past week, so Nell didn't hear much of her parents' conversation with her aunt.

Barely a quarter of an hour later, Jeanne and Madeleine left. The moment he had closed the front door behind them, Jacques Kervennec turned around slowly, looking into Nell's eyes with a steely merciless glare.

"_What_'s that Jeanne is telling me, Gwenaëlle? You, out and about on your own with a man, and a _foreigner _at that? That long-haired _American_ the Delacourt boy brought along?" The way he spat out the word 'American', it sounded like some ugly kind of disease.

For a split second, Nell wondered how her aunt knew about Mick, but that wasn't what mattered now. She swallowed hard as she got up from her chair, squared her shoulders and replied calmly in an unprecedented show of defiance, "Your own hair isn't much shorter than his, Father. And anyway, since when does the length of one's hair define one's character? Mick is a lovely person. Very nice. Very decent. A lot more so, in fact, than many of the boys from hereabouts!"

Jacques seemed perplexed for a moment, and at a loss for words. She had a point there. Jacques himself was blessed with a considerable mass of wavy grey hair that he wore rather long at the back.

But of course he'd rather have bitten off his own tongue than admit that his daughter was right. And apart from that, the sudden cheek she was showing did not sit well with him, not at all.

In a dangerously low voice, he hissed, "Don't get clever with me, young lady. Talking back doesn't become you, it really doesn't. I say you stay away from that bloke and out of the trouble he's sure to bring, and that's my final word. I don't want to hear anything about you and that stranger again!"

Nell stood rooted to the spot, unable to say or do anything except look at him incredulously as he turned angrily on his wife. "And you, Mathilde? Did you know about that? Did you?"

When she did nothing but stare at him with large, frightened eyes, he grabbed her hard by the arm and shook her.

"I'm talking to you, woman! Did you simply look on as your daughter got taken in by that … that … sailor type?"

She still didn't speak but uttered a pained whimper.

Nell pitched in. "Mother didn't know anything, Father, she really didn't. Mick was here a few times, yes, but she thought he was coming to see Loïc or to deliver some fish for Jean-Luc."

She hoped and prayed her mother wouldn't choose this instant for displaying the brutal honesty she sometimes resorted to when she was very upset.

She was lucky. Mathilde simply pressed her lips together, stubbornly silent, and her father went on, "Jeanne said the little one saw you and that … that man on the beach. _Lying_ on the beach, mind you."

Nell closed her eyes for a moment, waiting for him to swoop down on her for the final strike she knew would come.

"Haven't you got anything to say, Gwenaëlle?" he demanded sharply. "No denials? Is it true, then? Did you give yourself to the first sweet-talking stranger who happened to come along?"

Mathilde gasped loudly, and Nell protested, "Father, _please!"_

"_Please"_, he mocked her in an overdone pleading tone. "_Please! _Is that what you were saying to him on the beach, huh? When you let him fuck you?"

_"Father!_ Of course I did _not _let him _fuck_ me, as you like to put it, but if you're so keen to know, yes, he kissed me, and it was the most wonderful thing I've ever experienced _in all my miserable life in this miserable place!" _she shouted, her heart pounding as if it was going to jump out of her throat any second.

_And I'm certainly not giving him up, _she added secretly.

She didn't say it aloud for she knew she had already gone too far in her father's eyes.

When he swung his fist at her, it didn't come unexpected at all.

She took the hard blow he dealt her cheek with the stoical wordless resignation experience had taught her. She knew that he'd only get more furious and violent if she ducked away and he missed his aim the first time.

He got very drunk that night, tearfully apologizing for hitting her, asserting how much he loved her and cared about her wellbeing and her reputation, imploring her not to let anyone see her face until the bruise had faded sufficiently to be explained away casually.

She hadn't wanted to comply with his wish, not this time, but in the end, she'd had no other choice, fearing he'd knock her about a lot worse if she refused to play along. So they had cooked up the flu story together and she'd sent off her brother with the message to Mick, feeling miserable about lying to him.

Several times, she considered trying to get out of the house somehow to go see him after all, but she was too afraid of what she'd be in for if she got caught. Or, even worse, what her mother would be in for if her father noticed that she'd sneaked away. He might not shrink from taking his anger out on his wife if Nell herself was out of reach.

So she waited at home until the purple blotch on her cheek had shrunk in size and turned a pale yellow-brownish colour, tried to bear her father's moods and her mother's retreating into her shell patiently while she was almost bursting with the desire to fall into Mick's arms and pour his heart out to him.

Every night she lay awake for a long time, shedding silent tears into her pillow as she was trying to figure out how to go on. She certainly would not to give up Mick, this handsome, quiet foreigner who had struck some chord with her that no other boy or man had ever touched upon. She could still feel his callused, scratched, beautiful hands caress her with infinite tenderness, in this natural, gentle, inobtrusive way that was so different from the leering stares and lewd remarks some of the villagers directed at everything that wore a skirt or from the awkward pawing Simon Dupré, her neighbour and childhood friend, had given her once or twice at a village dance.

With Mick, it was something else. He had never made her do anything she wasn't ready to do, had merely found a way to express with his eyes, his lips, his hands what he wasn't able, or perhaps didn't want, to put into words. The very fact he didn't push her made her want to give herself to him, to be his entirely. He was the only man who had ever made her think like that.

But it wasn't only the physical attraction. Despite the language barrier that sometimes got in the way, she loved talking to him. He listened without judging her, and she felt she could tell him anything. He made her feel wanted and loved unconditionally just the way she was. He didn't attempt to change her, or boss her around. He was all she'd ever wanted in a man, or even more than that.

She knew the recent row with her father would be followed by many more quarrels, presumably violent ones, if she held fast to Mick, and she knew it wasn't only her own father who was very leery of any kind of foreigner.

Mick would have a difficult time settling into the village community for good. He'd never be fully accepted as one of their own. Most of the villagers were not keen on intruders from God knew where, and even less so if they were involved with a local girl. The common view was that local girls should marry local boys.

Well, she wouldn't, hopefully.

She was fully aware that choosing Mick would mean choosing the long and winding path, the path that was sure to hold plenty of obstacles. The locals wouldn't regard her as equal any longer, she'd always be "that American's girl", and she couldn't count on her family's support. Except maybe for her brother's, but he was just a boy whose opinion didn't amount to much. Anyway, the village gossips would have a field day whenever Mick did or said something that confirmed their narrow-minded concepts about people from elsewhere.

She wondered in her wakeful hours if she was strong enough to break away for Mick's sake, if she could stand becoming something of an outcast in her own hometown.

The least she could do was give it a try.

She had only known him for such a short time, but deep down she felt he was the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.

She also resolved to tell him the truth about her bruised cheek at some point. He was right, it wouldn't do to hide behind lies and excuses. Still she couldn't bring herself to talk about her father's abusive streak openly, not yet.

In the end, that was another decision that was made for her.

Mick, perceptive and sensitive as he was, saw right through her paltry story, and she just couldn't _not_ tell him the truth. It was about time he knew all about her family, if he hadn't guessed most of it anyway by now.


	3. Chapter 3

By the time Nell came to the end of her account, I was clutching the edge of my chair so hard that my knuckles went white, my jaw firmly set. I wanted to face down her father more than ever, now that I knew what he'd done and how he'd made her cover it all up.

She was crying now that the tension had finally fallen away, her elbows on the table, her head in her hands. I leaned forward and brushed the top of her head gently with my lips.

"What are we going to do now?" she sobbed. "I want to be with you. I want us to stay together, no matter what my father says, but I'm afraid of what he'll do to me. Or to you. Or to my mother."

I tipped up her chin and kissed her tenderly. "Where there's a will, there's a way", I said with a confidence I didn't entirely feel.

She gave me a wan smile and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "Hopefully", she said, getting out a hankie to blow her nose and dry her tears.

When she was finished, I pulled her up from her chair and into my arms, and we simply stood there, both finding momentary comfort in this wordless embrace.

A loud banging on the front door made us jump and the hair on the back of my neck stand on edge.

A kind of dispute seemed to have erupted outside. I could hear Jean-Luc's raised voice, and another one I couldn't place.

Nell, for her part, knew instantly who it was. _"Father!" _she whispered, startled.

I let go of her and said, "You stay here!" I pushed her gently aside towards the wall by the kitchen door where she wouldn't be visible from the entrance and I walked over and tore the front door open abruptly.

Both Jean-Luc and Mr. Kervennec's heads whipped round.

"Where's she? Where is my daughter?" Nell's father demanded without a greeting, poking his head around the door, frantically scanning the tiny vestibule. "Why isn't she here where I can see her? _Are you half naked, Gwenaëlle, that you don't show yourself when I call for you?" _he roared.

The man was in fact intimidating in his rage. Looking into his cold eyes, I didn't wonder any longer why Nell had had such a hard time to take her stand against him.

Nell came out of her hiding place, standing very straight in the middle of the doorframe, and said, "I'm here, Father. You can stop shouting. I can hear you very well."

His face reddened, his chest heaved, and he snarled, "Getting smart with me again, are you?"

I was prepared when he lunged forward at her.

He was stocky and tough and strongly built, but I was younger and taller and had the additional advantage of taking him by surprise. I seized his arm roughly and twisted it downward and back, away from his daughter, all the while locking eyes with his chilly glare.

"I'm not letting you hit her yet again!" I declared firmly, maintaining my grip on to his arm, shielding Nell from his view behind my back.

"Are you, huh?" he sneered, jerking his arm free from my grasp. "How exactly are you going to do that? What right do you have anyway to tell me how to treat my own daughter?"

"I love her, sir", I said simply.

"Oh, so you _love_ her", he scoffed. "That's easily said, _Mister_. Are you also planning to walk the talk, huh? Let your beautiful words be followed by actions? Give her a home, make her an honourable woman? Or is it all sweet talk and a bit of fun and then goodbye, as it often is with you foreigners?"

I inhaled deeply and replied, "It is not, certainly not." And, to my own surprise, I blurted, "We will get married as soon as I can afford to."

"Oh!" Nell gasped behind me. I was kind of startled about myself and the big promise I'd just made. It had come straight from my heart, out of the blue, without thinking.

I knew it was right, though. In the end, a traditional engagement and wedding would be the best way – the only way – to convince Mr. Kervennec that I was indeed serious about his daughter.

His mouth had fallen open at my announcement, and he was eyeing me suspiciously.

"We'll see if you do", he grumbled. "Come on home now, Gwenaëlle."

She shook her head and stepped over to stand very close to me. She laced her fingers through mine and told him with defiant determination, "I'm staying with Mick for a while, Father. I'll be home before dark, don't you worry."

"I'll walk her home, Monsieur Kervennec", I hastened to say.

Her father's jaws tightened, and I expected another explosion of bad temper, bracing myself for another skirmish, but Jean-Luc, who had stood by wordlessly all the time, intervened and coaxed, "Leave the two of them alone, Jacques. Remember when we were young and courting our girls? Come, let's go and have a glass or two at the _Korrigan."_

Both Nell and I held our breaths until her father made a dismissive gesture and nodded grudgingly. Jean-Luc patted him on the back, murmuring something soothing, and off they went.

Nell was trembling, her eyes shiny again. "My God, Mick. I hadn't reckoned he'd come here looking for me. I thought he was at my aunt and uncle's. He'd gone there to help repair the roof and I thought he'd stay there and have a few drinks with my uncle and my cousin. I … I wonder what he'd done to you if Jean-Luc hadn't been there."

"Well, he _was_ there, luckily", I said in a light tone that belied my own shaken-up emotions. "And I guess your father will have to get used to me. If you still want us to go on, that is."

"Of course I want us to go on. You … you even said you'd … marry me!" Her voice wavered. "You … you were serious about that, weren't you?"

"Sure I was", I said. "I wouldn't have said such a thing if I hadn't meant it. We'll have to wait a while, though. I was also serious about wanting us to have our own place, so I'll need another job. I'll go and try to find work on a merchant ship or something. Pay's a lot better than what I can get here, and I've always told Jean-Luc I'd not stick around forever helping him with his stinking fish."

She laughed at the face I pulled, as I had intended her to, but her expression turned back to somber quickly. "I see your point, but I don't want you to leave", she said morosely. "How am I supposed to survive when you're out there for weeks on end?"

"You'll manage, I'm sure. It's only for a while after all. I've saved up a bit already, and in a year or two, I may have enough that we can afford a little cottage, and perhaps I'll get a small boat to catch my own smelly fish." I kissed her on the forehead. "Don't think I prefer living on a cramped ship with a bunch of raucous sailors to being with my fiancée." I dabbed the tip of her nose with my index finger and winked.

She managed another wobbly smile. "Fiancée", she echoed. "I like the sound of that. Although I must say I wouldn't have expected to be engaged before nightfall."

"Me neither", I confessed, smiling wryly. "And I fear we've still got a long way to go, but the day will come when we'll be together for good."

Before delivering her safely at the door of her home as I had promised, I took her for a long, slow stroll, following my sudden urge to get out of the house. We didn't speak much, just watched the daylight fading gradually over the quiet sea and the blinking dots of lighthouses and beacons as they flashed on in the distance, one after the other. The dissonant cries of the seagulls and terns rang out shrilly above us.

As one of the birds, perched on the very end of the cliff, spread its wings and flapped away, Nell sighed wistfully.

"Sometimes I wish I could just fly away like one of them and leave all this behind", she said in a low voice. "Get out, get away from my father and my mother and all those other meddlesome people and for once do only what I want to do."

"We could do just that once we're married, you know", I suggested casually. "Go away, I mean. We needn't stay here if you don't want to. I for my part can live any place, as long as it's got the sea and it's got you."

Nell said nothing, pondering my words in silence as she reached for my hand.

The fiery orange orb of the sun was sinking slowly below the horizon, splendidly mirrored in the surface of the sea, and a sailboat glided past in the calm waters.

I wondered where it was headed, and I wondered where the journey Nell and I had embarked on would lead us. The waters wouldn't always be calm for us, that much was sure, but I was determined that we'd make it home against all odds, together.


End file.
